The Chernobyl explosion in 1986 was the only nuclear disaster to be rated a Level 7 until now (Source: Wordpress)

The Chernobyl explosion in 1986 was the only nuclear disaster to be rated a Level 7 until now

The nuclear crisis in Japan has had a roller
coaster of reports since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck on March 11. For
instance, CNN and MSNBC.com were
caught embellishing their stories early on, trying to make the nuclear danger
seem worse than it was. Now, new
reports are saying that Japanese officials may be downplaying the
amount of radiation released, since the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency has
now put the Fukushima Daiichi disaster on the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl
explosion.

The
Chernobyl disaster occurred in 1986 when an explosion led to fire that released
large amounts of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. This event was the
only nuclear disaster in history to be rated a 7 on the International Nuclear
Event Scale, but now, the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency has changed
Japan's nuclear crisis from a 5 to a 7 on the scale as well.

"This
is an admission by the Japanese government that the amount of radiation
released into the environment has reached a new order of magnitude," said
Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya
University. "The fact that we have now confirmed the world's second-ever
Level 7 accident will have huge consequences for the global nuclear industry.
It shows that currentsafety
standards are woefully inadequate."

As of
now, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan's nuclear regulator,
says the total amount of radioactive materials released from the plant equals
10 percent of what was released in Chernobyl. Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission
noted that 370,000 to 630,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material has been
released from Nos. 1 to 3 reactors.

According
to the International Nuclear Event Scale, a Level 7 is described as having
"widespread health and environmental effects." The announcement that
Japan is now a Level 7 came as Japan was pushing more citizens to evacuate
areas near the Fukushima Daiichi plant because of long-term radiation exposure
fears. People living within a 12-mile radius of the plant were already ordered
to evacuate early on, but now, government officials have ordered those living
within a 19-mile radius to stay inside or evacuate the area.

In
addition, communities beyond the 19-mile radius have been evacuated as well due
to how the radiation is spreading. Different variables like wind can determine
where the radiation spreads. For instance, a community called Iitate, which is
"well beyond the 19-mile radius," has had high radiation readings
because of wind from the plant. The government is also looking to evacuate
Katsurao, Kawamata, Minamisoma and Namie within one month because of concerns
regarding long-term radiation exposure. If the
conditions grow worse, Naraha, Hirono, Tamura, Kawauchi and other sections of
Minamisoma will be evacuated as well.

"This
measure is not an order for you to evacuate or take actions immediately,"
said Yukio Edano, chief cabinet secretary. "We arrived at this decision by
taking into account the risks of remaining in the area in the long term."

With both
the Chernobyl explosion and Japan's nuclear crisis on the same level on
the International Nuclear Event Scale, some are worried that Fukushima may
become worse than Chernobyl. For instance, Junichi Matsumoto, a nuclear
executive for Tokyo Electric Power Company, said his biggest concern is that
radiation levels could exceed Chernobyl at some point. But there are some
clear distinctions between the two events that make his claim extremely
unlikely. The most important difference between Chernobyl and the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear crisis is that most of the radioactive elements in Fukushima's
reactors were contained within the reactors.

"If
everything inside the reactor came out, obviously that would surpass
Chernobyl," said Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner and the former director of
the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University. "There was only one
troubled reactor there, while we have three or more, so simply speaking, that's
three times as worse. But at Fukushima, most of the reactors' radioactive
elements remained within the reactor. That's a big difference."

The
health effects from Chernobyl are expected to remain worse than Japan's health
effects as well. Thirty-one people died in Chernobyl while 20 workers were
injured at Fukushima. In addition, Dr. Robert Peter Gale, who led the
international medical team responding to Chernobyl, said that if the nuclear
crisis in Japan did not become any worse, there would be few, if any, thyroid
cancer cases and 200 to 1,500 other cancer cases combined over the next 50
years. In Chernobyl, there were 6,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer
alone.

In
regards to whether the Japanese government was downplayingthe
amount of radiation released, reports indicate that the Japanese government
did not have an exact idea of the amounts of radiation released in the early
weeks of the event, and "last week had the amounts down to an error margin
within several digits."

"Some
foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk,"
said Shiroya. "If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level
7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction."

Prime
Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday evening that Japan will rebuild, and that
reactors were being stabilized despite this new decision to place the nuclear
disaster at a Level 7. He also noted that radioactive material release is
declining. In addition, he ordered Tokyo Electric to present new plans for the
Fukushima Daiichi plant.

"What
I can say for the information I obtained - of course the government is very
large, so I don't have all the information - is that no information was ever
suppressed or hidden after the accident," said Kan.

According
to the International
Atomic Energy Agency, it measured radiation this past Saturday of 0.4 to
3.7 microsieverts per hour in areas located 20 to 40 miles from the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear plant.

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Second worst nuclear power disaster in history and yet.. nobody has died.

Of course all we will hear about is how unsafe our nuclear practices are (forget the fact the plant survived an earthquake and a tsunami) and how we should not build anymore plants for the next 50 years...

Right now, we average around 1 major inncident per decade with Nuclear Power [there are a few little known close calls aside from the three everyone knows]. Either its built too close to people, built in a bad location, old, or the people or ill-trained. Does anyone believe putting one of these things within 50 miles of NYC, on a major fault line of all things, make any sense whatsoever?

If you want nuclear, fine. Just put them far away from people and ship the power elsewhere. Utah seems to be a nice, out of the way place to put all the plants...

No offense to the Japanese government and I am not a scientist but if my local nuclear power plant got hit with anything that makes the news Im not using the recommended safety measurement provided. Im going to another state for a while.

I take the one American I saw early on leaving the country with his family who said by the time they tell him to leave he feels it will already be too late. I think he was right.

Am I against nuclear? No I think we should build more just dont sugar coat the danger when something goes wrong

As for Japan I dont believe we will know the full extent of damage or truth about this for many years to come.

This will be remembered as the society that gave up 25000 years of nuclear waste for 70 years of ¿cheap? electricity.

Meanwhile the Japanese government is planning on buying the Fukushima plant so that the company can still do OK in the stock market.That's capitalism at its best: socializing rich people's losses and privatizing the profits.

Rich are getting richer and the rest of us are getting poorer.That's how the world rolls nowadays :-(

Also... it's a way so that Tepco doesn't have to pay for all the health problems that the Fukushima plant is going to cause, not only in Japan, but in the rest of the world.

Remember that Chernobyl had 180 tons of nuclear fuel when it went down.Fukushima's nuclear plant has 7200 tons.

It's going to take a heck of a lot longer for the Fukushima area to recover, that's for sure.

Now just wait and see how radiation starts flowing to Eastern Asian's and Western America's food chains...

How?

The amount of radiation released to the atmosphere has been "relatively" low, but "the amount of radioactivity being released is similar to that of Chernobyl but it is largely being contained in water, which is going into the ocean".

Do you know where rain comes from?Yes, I know that you know that most of it comes from the ocean.

This is no car accident. When it becomes a crisis, many more people are effected and for much much longer. All related diseases to direct contact and indirect, food..., ingestion. If it can be considered viable for the future it has to be balanced to it's negative side. which is much more complicated than other sources. Stockpiling is still an issue, where and how. They have locations at this moment but considered temporary. Water table and a slew of difficult problems to solve. In theory it is easy to do it but in practice, still puzzles the best of them! Many alternatives could be applied today, conserving energy is one of them. Water could be viewed as an example as to how much we waste and use at a rate unparalleled no where else on earth. It is not a right to take as much as the market says!

On a per watt basis, more people die from solar panels than die from nuclear power. Coal kills more than 4,000 times more people (on a per watt basis) than nuclear does. Coal releases more radiative material on a per watt basis than nuclear does. Ash spills and coal mine fires have resulted in about the same amount of land lost to human development as nuclear does.

To date, the highest radiation levels outside of the plant itself are around 50 uSv/hr. But, 90% of that value is coming from iodine, which will be nearly undetectable in 3 months time. That leaves 5 uSv/hr from longer lived isotopes, generally an isotope of Cesium. That means that the yearly exposure will be, after the iodine decays, around 43 mSv/year. Or about half of the level that can be statistically shown to increase your risk of cancer (and that increase is very, very small even at 100 mSv/year).

While I support nuclear power, people are squeemish for a reason. While nuclear power is regulated, it is still in the hands of businesses which have the tendency to cut corners and manipulate markets where it can to pass on savings/earnings to shareholders, no matter how cheap the source of energy. While I support nuclear and think it can be safe, I don't trust existing energy companies to properly manage them.

Fukushima is THE case in poin- Japan was warned by the US in the 90's about the flaws in that particular plant design. We currently have 24 plants with the same design that to my understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong) have not undergone upgrades.

I don't subscribe to the extreme of saying nuclear should not be used, but I can understand why people might subscribe to an all or nothing attitude. People who support nuclear typically support no regulation/little government regulation (an extreme that I don't support). Fortunately disasters with nuclear have been few and far between, but with corporate negligence and manipulation a factor, and with potentially devastating effects, like loss of land/resources, life, and public health implications they could be much worse.

The problem is that the anti-nuke activists destroyed the industry for 4 decades. Because there were no power plants being built, there has been minimal amounts of effort put into improving designs and addressing the waste issues. Even with the minimal amount of effort put into the field, a modern reactor, one that was actually redesigned from the ground up, would be orders of magnitude safer and more efficient that the 40 year old antiques that we're stuck with today. I can't help but think that we'd be building the first commercial fission fragment designs right about now, if only the environmentalists hadn't tried to kill the industry.

I'm very pro-nuke, but I abhor the current nuclear infrastructure. It's at best inefficient in the way it uses fuel and at worst is dangerous the second the owners of the plant start cutting corners. But the answer to those problems isn't to deny permits for nuclear power plants, it's to require that the new plants are designed from the ground up with fail safes that make sense.

Yes because environmentalists have a habit of being rational human beings and just asking for basic safeguards right?

No. They have the habit of saying "This is evil! Look at Chernobyl! It will kill us all!"

People wouldn't be concerned if not for the media blowing shit out of proportion. This was an extremely rare case of too many things going wrong all at once.

Should this design be used anymore? No. It's not being. Should you build a nuclear power plant on a fault line and next to the coast where tsunamis are a danger? Obviously not. Clearly the lesson here is make sure your redundant systems are sealed.

I realize this type of danger exists in Japan. I'm not concerned with how they generate their power. I care about how we do it here. And here in the US, there isn't really any danger of this happening. We don't get earthquakes resulting in massive tidal waves along our coasts. And there's very few locations that have to worry about flooding and the weather taking out power lines.

quote: Clearly the lesson here is make sure your redundant systems are sealed.

quote: Again. Practice lessons learned and keep moving forward.

Is leaving 24 nuclear plants without safety upgrades an example of learning lessons and moving forward?

I'm not saying the environmentalists are being reasonable- but at the same time, the energy industry is not being reasonable either- regardless of what we *think* may or may not happen, it is in the best interests of the energy industry and the safety of the American public for them to perform these upgrades. It protects the industries profits and helps protect Americans from a disaster.

And while the natural disaster scenario might *seem* unlikely in the United States, aren't we also concerned about a potential terrorist finding a way of exploiting the weaknesses in our nuclear infrastructure? There was a time when we didn't think it was possible for them to take down two skyscrapers, wasn't there?

I think the best and most logical way to move forward is to upgrade our existing plants, then invest in building new ones, rather than giving the environmentalists fuel to argue against it.

quote: aren't we also concerned about a potential terrorist finding a way of exploiting the weaknesses in our nuclear infrastructure?

Ever been to a nuclear facility? Not exactly an easy place to get into. If you don't think there is planning for that already in place, you're mistaken. Is anything ever perfect though? No. And it'd be less of a risk if we'd secure our borders.

And I'm not against making upgrades if the risks warrant it. But if a plant of this design is in the middle of Texas where there are no earthquakes or risks of giant waves, why would you worry about those things?

But yes environmentalists are entirely at fault for these older plants really being a problem to begin with. If development had not stopped, they maybe could have retired some of the older plants by now. Hell the one in Japan was due for retirement later this year.

quote: Ever been to a nuclear facility? Not exactly an easy place to get into. If you don't think there is planning for that already in place, you're mistaken. Is anything ever perfect though? No. And it'd be less of a risk if we'd secure our borders.

Not saying it's an easy place to get into. I'm saying it's strategically better to fix a known weakness. Rather than leave it exposed for potential exploitation. Who knows how this might be exploited- we didn't think they'd use jets and commit suicide to take down the buildings, did we? Maybe you should enlist in the miltary, and teach them how effective leaving weaknesses and design flaws exposed can be to a defense strategy.

And futher, it would show a commitement on the part of the energy industry to deliver a safe, reliable product. Their resistence shows that their commitment is to the bottom line rather than safety. I wonder how many CEOs of energy companies live within 500 miles of a nuclear reactor.

quote: And it'd be less of a risk if we'd secure our borders.

Why not do both. Let the federal government work harder on securing the borders and let the energy industry secure the reactors? There's no good reason to not do both.

quote: But yes environmentalists are entirely at fault for these older plants really being a problem to begin with. If development had not stopped, they maybe could have retired some of the older plants by now.

So many problems with this thought I don't know where to begin.

A) Environmentalists are NOT responsible for the energy industry not upgrading power plants.B) It's not likely any plants would have been retired given our growing energy needs and the investment already placed in them.C) The blame also lies in the hands of an energy industry that cuts costs and focuses on the bottom line. If the company running the plant had upgraded their safety systems, this wouldn't be an overblown issue in the media. Greenpeace is only exploiting the failure and the energy industry should be aware that every failure will be exploited by the activists.

quote: Hell the one in Japan was due for retirement later this year.

Sure, because retiring it later this year helps. What matters is what's happening now. If they had performed the upgrades anytime in the last 20 years they wouldn't be facing the issues they are now. They didn't think the risk was likely. All it took was one time for them to be wrong. By the wa this sounds nothing like the reasoning you're using now.

Why do you keep ignoring practicality? Upgrading the weakeness when it was identified would have been beneficial on many fronts.

By the way, Fukushima was going to be decommissioned because it coming to the end of its serviceable life, not because newer, more efficient plants were being built.

SHUT UP you anti nuclear person. Nuclear power is completely safe, safeguards have been put in place and things have been learned from Chernobyl. That is why there have been no accidents in nuclear powerplants since. Nuclear is completely safe. More people die from eating toxic jellyfish each year than they do from explosions in nuclear powerplants. As for the radiation, it's natural for our genes to change, it aids evolution. Would YOU want to look and act like your parents? Exactly. Besides, it's no more dangerous inside the Fukushima plant than it is in a place like Cornwall.

Plus the chances of an accident happening in a perfect world from nuclear powerplants is about 1 every 10,000 years. We've had chedrnobyl, so it's 9,960+ years until the next one. We're not going to be alive then, so it's fine. (Ignore the things about location, unpredictable variables, accidents and stuff, they can't be predicted and therefore shouldn't be prepared for).

I rest my case. Don't bother replying unless you're willing to write up such a comprehensive and scientifically-proven comment.

You're right. You're also far more likely to die choking on a pretzel than ever from radiation relating to nuclear disasters. Heck, a pretzel tried to assassinate one of our presidents! Those things are SCARY.

Btw, France currently dominates nuclear power industry. It could mean a lot of jobs if we had the technology to compete with them. Around 30 permits on file right now before the gov't waiting to be approved. Got to have a license to build. Waiting. Waiting....

The reaction is similar to that of fear of flying. Even though you are more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash, there is a difference. If the plane DOES crash, you will almost surely die, whereas if a car crashes, you most likely will not.

Even though nuclear is far safer per watt than other sources of energy, the fear is not based on such statistics, but the fear of the worst case scenario. It is not totally irrational, since the worst case for nuclear is pretty bad.

What is happening in Japan is pretty minor in terms of safety, but it does remind people of the potential for disaster, which scares them.

This should serve as a wake-up call to build newer, safer power plants. But instead it will just serve as a reminder of the remote possibility of nuclear disaster. People can't help but think of worst case, instead of considering statistics.

But it's not really about the worst case scenario it's about the perceived worse case scenario. A lot of people think meltdown means huge Hiroshima style explosion. Without sensationalisation this accident could have helped improve people's feelings about nuclear.And then there are the historic worse cases. Nuclear: Chernobyl, 4000. Hydroelectric: Banqiao, 171,000.And then there is almost forgotten Fukushima dam that burst after the earthquake and has killed more people than the reactors have/will.

quote: Solar panels aren't drifting across the sky and contaminating other countries... If a country can't keep it's radiation to itself then they can go and **** themselves :)

Too often, people miss the sense of scale when thinking about nuclear power, and do ridiculous things like compare a nuclear power plant to the solar panels on their roof.

The Fukushima Daiichi power station has 4.7 GW of generation capacity. Nuclear plants typically have about a 90% capacity factor (that is, over a year, they generate 90% of their maximum capacity). So that'd be 4.23 GW average power generation.

1 square meter of solar panels has an average power generation of about 20 Watts after you factor in losses (night, angle to the sun, cloudy days, etc). To generate an average 4.23 GW with solar panels would thus take 211.5 million square meters, or 211.5 square km of solar panels.

In other words, 1 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant = area the size of Chicago completely covered in solar panels.

I can guarantee you that the pollution from the materials and energy needed to manufacture that many solar panels is considerable, and would drift across the sky and through the water contaminating other countries.

The global silicon wafer production capcity is around 315 million square meters. If all of the electronics and automotive, etc. industries are shut down for a year, we might be able to make enough to build one such power station. It has ramped way up in recent years, though. A few years ago it would have taken several years of the global wafer production to make one nuclear plant replacement.

Like it or not, there isn't much choice. It will be decades before there is sufficient capacity to actually build PV plants capable of replacing nuclear. The Japanese government is going to be between a rock and a hard place. They have to somehow replace more than 4 GW of continuos power lost from the grid. They are going to be forced to tell the Japanese people that they must build, or approve to be built, a new nuclear facility. To appease the public, they are likely to build as large a PV plant as they can in addition to a new nuclear facility. That way they can say they minimized the nuclear, even though the PV plant will be 5% of the replacement capacity and the new nuke will be 95%.

People who will have the experience to choose on this matter, of course the Japanese, I wonder how they will proceed in the future. California is on a fault, should be a good warning to do something to the existing plants and maybe look beyond this power source altogether. Coal creates smog which extends in time through a warming effect. How long will this be. Fairly long I suspect, since we have decided to continue using this source until there is no more. Nuclear is for thousands of years! Our incapacity to look squarely at the facts is directly proportionate to our greed.

Indirect, direct, sideways, backwards.. The current estimate including thyroid cancer etc (i.e those impacted but not neccesarily deaths) is still lower than the amount of people that DIE mining coal each year.

This does not even include the impact of the actual coal powered plants have on the surrounding environment and the population surrounding them. (including small amounts of radiation being released via fly ash all around the country). We have only scratched the surface in the exploration of the health and environmental risks surrounding these kind of power sources.

And please keep in mind this disaster is the product of two major disaster happening at the same time.

Nuclear power needs to be part of our future power generation. Water, Wind, Solar are not complete alternatives, they just don't have the reliability to be more than 20-30% of our power infrastructure. So its either you stick with coal and natural gas plants for the majority of your power needs, or we move to the cleaner and more efficient source of power in Nuclear.

Those are your choices for the foreseeable future, anyone telling you otherwise needs to wake up inform themselves.

I'm not saying these alternatives can't be used, I'm saying they need to be used in conjunction with other sources.

And please keep in mind this disaster is the product of two major disaster happening at the same time.

And on top of that to an old and poorly managed facility. Onagawa isn't having any problems, and that nuclear power plant was closer to the earthquake. What we are seeing here I think is the worst possible thing that could happen to any power plant, and that's only speaking of the dated facilities. If Fukushima had been a modern power plant with current safety designs, this incident would have never occurred despite the tremendous stresses the facility would have seen.

"And please keep in mind this disaster is the product of two major disaster happening at the same time"---Tsunami typically follows underwater earthquake, what is so unusual? It is NOT a highly improbable coincidence of two independent events. These two major disasters were expected to happen in that area. Why did Japan build its nuclear plant there in the first place?

It is a major disaster with no end in sight - 4 crippled runaway reactors, melted cores and hundreds of tons of highly radioactive fuel/waste nobody knows how to deal with and when it will be over. And all you could think of it is "a sad sad day" because you will not be able to build "plants for the next 50 years".

quote: And all you could think of it is "a sad sad day" because you will not be able to build "plants for the next 50 years".

Thats exactly 'All I could think of'..

Here are a few stats for you, in 2004 official chinese stats indicate that 6000 people died from coal mining. A further 10000 blank lung cases are reported each year. Thats China alone, its estimated around 30-40 die in the US each year with around 4000 cases of black lung cases diagnosed.

This is coal mining alone, and does not bring the actual plants into account.

So please, which source of fuel do you think has the bigger impact even if the worst case scenario is realized in Japan?

Accidents will happen with any source of power, as others have stated every single source of energy including green alternatives result in more deaths per KW generated.

1. Runaways? Not that I heard.2. Hundreds of tons? You exaggerate to push your view. The most dangerous is Iodine that will decay very soon.3. Nobody knows how to deal with it? It seems to me to be being deal with very professionally. Despite the extreme conditions that caused the problem, the worst case scenarios were avoided. They are now working to minimize the effects of what *did* happen (not insignificant, but nowhere near what the doom and gloom purveyors were saying).4. Nobody knows when it will be over? I think there are good assessments of how long each part of the cleanup will take.

In short, I think we should all stop fixating on reactor problems and help Japan recover from a devastating earthquake and tsunami. And, yes, some of their recovery problems *will* be related to the nuclear situation caused by that same earthquake and tsunami. But the nuclear problems are small compared to the rest of it.

This has been blown so way out of propotion. Even Chernobyl is still in operation, and people work in it! (It'll finally be completely decommissioned soon)

People are way too afraid of radiation. The current levels at the plant are not that dangerous, let alone the negligible levels around the plant. People forget that their bodies themselves are laced with radioactive potassium at this very moment (you are your own radiation source! I light up a Geiger counter myself, it's amusing), or that the natural amounts of radon and uranium in soil everywhere is the biggest source you'll get per year. Your body is BUILT to deal with radiation. Heck, water itself is six times more potent a mutagen of (unprotected) DNA than radiation is (due to depurination of DNA by hydrolysis, but again, we are BUILT to deal with that and suffer no ill consequences as long as our repair systems have not been compromised by bad health or diet).

What's more deadly: standing near one of these reactors, or drinking any normal industrial waste produced from anywhere? Let's just say, drinking industrial waste would be a very efficient way to commit gruesome suicide, the plant not so much, not even after decades.

I fully support nuclear power and you'd think that these eco-freaks would be all over it because it really is the "cleanest" form of large-scale electricity generation we have.

Like anything there are going to be drawbacks and with nuclear power it is dealing with the radioactive waste from the spent fuel rods, as well as ensuring radiation containment while the plant is operational. Overall we have done well with both all things considered...HOWEVER, I will say that I do have a problem with countries building nuclear power plants in areas KNOWN to be unstable. It is NO SECRET that Japan as a whole is geologically unstable. We KNOW its right on top of a major fault line, and therefore it should not be able to build and house nuclear power plants.

I would have suggested that Japan strike a deal with S.Korea to build and maintain its power plants there, while the deal would allow some kind of subsidy from the S.Korean government and/or a possible power-share type of deal. The power can then be transmitted to Japan via under sea cables.

This option may seem impractical on the surface and it certainly isn't as efficient as having the power plants locally, but considering that a malfunctioning nuclear power plant can irradiate a large area and render it "useless" for 100+ years, it's not a bad option and it's still more cost-effective than solar or wind power.

Anyway, as long as we are building nuclear power plants in geologically stable areas WITH design contingencies for the unexpected (i.e. having an earthquake in an area we though was stable) we would be fine.

The thing that I find reassuring about your use of the term "eco-freak" is its blatant rejection of any possible validity to a view other than your own. No one should listen to an intolerant speaker. Intolerance is unreasonable. Thank you for negating your own position.